Deflection of coronal mass ejection in the interplanetary medium

Abstract

A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) is a large-scale eruption of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun. It is believed to be the main source of strong interplanetary disturbances that may cause intense geomagnetic storms. However, not all front-side halo CMEs can encounter the Earth and produce geomagnetic storms. The longitude distribution of the Earth-encountered front-side halo CMEs (EFHCMEs) has not only an east–west (E–W) asymmetry (Wang et al., 2002), but also depends on the EFHCMEs' transit speeds from the Sun to 1 AU. The faster the EFHCMEs are, the more westward does their distribution shift, and as a whole, the distribution shifts to the west. Combining the observational results and a simple kinetic analysis, we believe that such E–W asymmetry appearing in the source longitude distribution is due to the deflection of CMEs' propagation in the interplanetary medium. Under the effect of the Parker spiral magnetic field, a fast CME will be blocked by the background solar wind ahead and deflected to the east, whereas a slow CME will be pushed by the following background solar wind and deflected to the west. The deflection angle may be estimated according to the CMEs' transit speed by using a kinetic model. It is shown that slow CMEs can be deflected more easily than fast ones. This is consistent with the observational results obtained by Zhang et al. (2003), that all four Earth-encountered limb CMEs originated from the east. On the other hand, since the most of the EFHCMEs are fast events, the range of the longitude distribution given by the theoretical model is E40°,W70°, which is well consistent with the observational results (E40°,W75°).